This invention relates to apparatuses for breaking rods of brittle materials, such as glass optical fibers, in a way that reliably produces flat end surfaces that are perpendicular to the longitudinal axis of the fiber.
With installation and maintenance consuming an ever increasing share of system costs, simple and inexpensive splicing techniques become a prerequisite for economically competitive communication systems. One bottleneck encountered in splicing optical fiber cables is the fiber end preparation, as conventional grinding and polishing techniques turn out to be too time consuming and costly, especially when practiced in the field by service and maintenance personnel.
It is well known that glass fibers sometimes break with flat, perpendicular end faces if previously scored, and it has become common practice in the laboratory to obtain good ends in this way by a process of trial and error. Besides being inexpensive and simple, this technique has the added advantage of producing perfectly clean surfaces uncontaminated by lossy residues. However, for such a laboratory practice to become a useful technology, absolute control of the breaking process and the utmost reliability in obtaining successful results are required.
It is, accordingly, the broad object of the present invention to provide a reliable apparatus for breaking optical fibers for producing flat, perpendicular end surfaces. In particular, the apparatus is to implement the rod or fiber breaking method of our above-described patent application.